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17 hours ago
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The nomination of Jonathan McKernan to lead the besieged Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) remains uncertain. While his nomination was passed out of the Senate Banking Committee nearly two months ago, it has remained on the executive calendar of the Senate without being scheduled for a vote.
There is not an abundance of hard facts related to the potential for the nomination to move forward, but some in the housing space have spoken about it. Tim Scott, the chair of the Senate Banking Committee, said last month that he expected McKernan could be confirmed in May. But there have yet to be signs of progress on a vote to seat him.
Tim Rood, the founder and CEO of Impact Capitol and a former executive at Fannie Mae, recently took to social media platform X to suggest that the nomination will take longer than previously thought — or it may not happen at all.
Rood said there are “rumblings” that a Democratic demand for 30 hours of floor time prior to the actual vote taking place could effectively push out the nomination. This is because there are several other outstanding issues that the Senate would want to take up first.
When reached by HousingWire on Friday, Rood said that it appeared to him that Democrats would seek to make the vote for McKernan a referendum on Russell Vought — the acting CFPB director and head of the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) — and the cost-cutting efforts he has undertaken.
Rood also suggested in his post that McKernan may not have been consulted on some of the recent actions taken regarding CFPB staffing cuts, or a recent memo outlining revised bureau supervision and enforcement priorities.
“The new priorities and [reduction in force] will result in an agency that is fundamentally different than the one he signed up to lead in the first instance,” Rood said in his post. “The lack of consultation would also say a few things about potential misalignment between the administration’s plan for the agency and McKernan’s.”
This could lead to McKernan choosing to withdraw his name from consideration — which would likely lead to an outcome that CFPB defenders would not like to see happen.
David Dworkin, president and CEO of the National Housing Conference (NHC), told HousingWire that CFPB defenders — namely Democrats — should be moving to support McKernan’s quick nomination.
“If you care about the mission of the CFPB, you want a guy like Jonathan McKernan in there as soon as possible,” Dworkin said. “And Democrats should be bending over backwards to help him get confirmed. He is not going to be their ideal candidate, but he will be the best person they could hope for.”
McKernan will follow the broader agenda of the Trump administration and the president himself, Dworkin said, but he would avoid “gutting everything” that the bureau has previously done..
“Jonathan is committed to following the statute,” he said. “That is a reasonable expectation that everyone should be behind.”
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